ALTERNATIVE NEWS

21 Oct 2012

By Minxin Pei:While many have feared its rise, a weaker China
struggling with economic and political challenges at home may present an
even greater challenge.

One of the questions on the minds of most China watchers these days is how Beijing will behave externally when it faces a far more difficult internal environment. Of the well-recognized challenges China will encounter in the coming years are its deteriorating economic dynamism, a structure of decision-making with diffused power and uncertain authority, rising nationalism, growing demand for political reform, and widespread popular disenchantment with the status quo.In totality, these internal difficulties will reduce the resources
available to maintain and expand China's influence around the world, constrain the Chinese military's ability to accelerate its modernization,
and make Chinese leaders more reluctant to assume greater international
or regional responsibilities. Most worryingly, erratic behavior driven
by a mixture of lack of leadership experience and political security
will most likely mark Beijing's foreign policy conduct in the coming
years.

At least four Afghan
children have been killed in an attack carried out by US-led forces in
Afghanistan’s eastern province of Logar, Press TV reports.

According to local sources, US-led troops fired missiles on
residential areas in the country’s east, killing several children who
were on their way to school.
Reports say two other children were also injured in the incident which occurred on Sunday.

The issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan is
highly sensitive and has been a major source of friction between Afghan
President Hamid Karzai and Washington.

Moreover, the loss of civilian lives at the hands of US-led foreign
forces has dramatically increased anti-American sentiments in
Afghanistan, triggering anti-US protests across the war-torn country.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 on the pretext of combating terrorism.
The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but years into the invasion, insecurity continues to rise across the country.Source

By Sherwood Ross: U.S. plans to attack Iran with a mix of nuclear and
conventional weapons have been in readiness since June, 2005, a
distinguished authority on international affairs says.

“Confirmed by military documents as well as official
statements, both the U.S. and Israel contemplate the use of nuclear
weapons directed against Iran,” writes University of Ottawa Professor
(Emeritus) Michel Chossudovsky, in a recently released book entitled “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War”

The plans were formulated in 2004. The previous year,
Congress gave the Pentagon the green light to use tactical nukes in
conventional war theatres such as the Middle East and Central Asia,
allocating $6 billion in 2004 alone to create this new generation of
“defensive” weapons.

“In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered USSTRATCOM
(Strategic Command) to draft a ‘contingency plan’ that included “a
large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical
nuclear weapons,” Chossudovsky writes. The plan went beyond even the
Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review(NPR)’s “contingency plans” for an
offensive “first strike use” of nuclear weapons against Russia and
China as well as Iran and North Korea.

Freies Neukölln, Weserstr, Berlin-Neukölln. Gentrification in Berlin's
former problem borough. The Creative Class marches in and the founders
of the first szene-pub in this corner feel unwell, guilty and
overrun. That's why this speech on their own account is necessary,
long overdue and probably still too friendly. Source

Submitted by Tyler Durden: First it was more than the UK. Then more than Portugal. Then a month ago we said that as of September, "it is now safe to say that in 2012 alone China has imported more gold than the ECB's entire official 502.1 tons of holdings."
Sure enough, according to the latest release from the Hong Kong Census
and Statistics Department, through the end of August, China had imported
a whopping gross 512 tons of gold, 10 tons more than the latest
official ECB gold holdings. We can now safely say that as of today, China will have imported more gold than the 11th largest official holder of gold, India, with 558 tons.

Yet despite importing more gold than the sovereign holdings of
virtually all official entities, save for ten, importing more gold in
July than in any month in 2012 except for April, importing more gold in 8
months in 2012 than all of 2011, and importing four times as much
between January and July than as much as in the same period last year,
here is MarketWatch with its brilliant conclusion that the 'plunge'
in gold imports in August can only be indicative of the end of the
Chinese gold market, and the second coming of infinitely dilutable fiat.

“China’s near-term appetite for gold appears to be waning as bullion
imports from Hong Kong slow,” HSBC analysts said in a note following the
data release last week.

Anecdotal evidence also pointed to the cooling trend, with one Hong
Kong bullion dealer saying the word from mainland clients was that gold
inventories are saturated.

“What we are hearing from our customers is that they were buying gold
rapidly over the last couple of years, but they would now see some of
their stocks sold off before they rebuild some of their inventories,”
Scotia Mocatta managing director Sunil Kashyap said in Hong Kong.

Submitted by Tyler Durden:The last time we checked on the (funding) status of America's real presidential
race - the one where America's uber-wealthy try to outspend each other
in hopes of purchasing the best president money can buy - the totals
were substantially lower. With November 6 rapidly approaching, however,
the scramble to lock in those record political lobbying IRRs
is in its final lap. And thanks to the unlimited nature of PAC
spending, look for the spending to really go into overdrive in the next 2
weeks as the spending frenzy on the world's greatest tragicomedy hits
previously unseen heights.

Martin Sibileau:If you are interested in the mechanics of
this fictional process, you are welcome to keep reading. Otherwise,
please, accept our apologies. But if you ask us, learning how fiction
works always helps to cope with reality

Today we retake the discussion left two
weeks ago, on a return to the gold standard. We had divided the
discussion in two parts: The first part (here) was based on an historical perspective. Today, we will deal with the technical one.

As a summary of the first part, we left
with two important conclusions: a) A gold standard will fail if the
banking system is allowed to survive with a reserve requirement below
100%, and b) Establishing a gold standard does not require that gold be
confiscated. The question before us today is: How do we transition from
this:

The United States has
warned European governments against supporting a Palestinian bid for
enhanced status at the United Nations, saying such a move "would be
extremely counterproductive" and threatening "significant negative
consequences" for the Palestinian Authority, including financial
sanctions.